In the section entitled "The Opportunity of Defeat," Dweck presents her first reason, which is that students with a growth mind-set show more persistence when faced with obstacles. What evidence does she use to support her view that "attributing poor performance to a lack of ability depresses motivation more than does the belief that lack of effort is to blame?

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Jada Faulkner

18 May, 00:08

In the section entitled "The Opportunity of Defeat," Dweck presents her first reason, which is that students with a growth mind-set show more persistence when faced with obstacles. What evidence does she use to support her view that "attributing poor performance to a lack of ability depresses motivation more than does the belief that lack of effort is to blame?

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Sara Young · Answer 1

Carol Dweck is a world-renowned psychologist best known for her book MindSet (2006). Dweck's fields of specialization in psychology are: mindset, success, achievement and motivation.

According to Dweck, "attributing poor performance to a lack of ability depresses motivation more than the belief that lack of effort is to blame". In other words, when an individual belies that (s) he lacks the ability to achieve a task, his/her performance suffers more compared to when s/he believes that lack of effort is the cause of poor performance.

The evidence Dweck provided for this claim was a study conducted at Yale University (1960), where the results indicated that when monkeys were unable to finish a challenge successfully, they attributed their failure to lack of belief in their abilities and perceived that task as beyond their control. As a result, these monkeys simply gave up on the task. In this way, "attributing poor performance to a lack of ability depresses motivation ... ".